History of St. Louis (1763–1803)

In mid-1763, French Governor Jean-Jacques Blaise d'Abbadie granted a trade monopoly over the west upper Mississippi region to Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent, a New Orleans merchant. Maxent quickly engaged the service of Jean Francois Le Dee and Pierre Laclède to build trading posts in the Illinois Country. The men returned to Fort de Chartres for the winter to recruit workers, but in February, Laclède sent Chouteau and 30 men to begin construction of cabins and a shed for supplies. Laclède himself arrived in April 1764 to inspect the site, at which point he named the village St. Louis and provided detailed plans for laying out streets and for construction of his headquarters. The plan of the village was similar to that of New Orleans, including a public marketplace centered on the riverfront and a grid street pattern. The market, Laclède's headquarters, and a church stood in a line of blocks west from the bank of the river, and the market block was separated from the river by a limestone block ledge. North of the market block and perpendicular to the river was Market Street (also known as La Rue de la Place or La Rue Bonhomme); south of the market block were Walnut Street (also known as La Rue de la Tour) and Chestnut Street (also known as La Rue Missouri). In October 1765, the transfer of the east bank to the United Kingdom was completed, and the French Lieutenant Governor Louis St. Ange de Bellerive officially moved the upper Louisiana capital to St. Louis. ==Life under Spanish control==

Although Spain nominally gained control of Louisiana according to the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1762, the first Spanish governor of the territory, Antonio de Ulloa, arrived in New Orleans only in March 1766. He was replaced as governor by Alejandro O'Reilly, who suppressed the rebellion and who appointed Don Pedro Piernas as lieutenant governor of upper Louisiana in August 1769. The French commandant of the village, St. Ange, transferred formal control to Piernas on May 20, 1770, and St. Ange was named assistant to Piernas and special adviser on Indian affairs. After the transfer, Piernas confirmed St. Ange's and Laclède's land grants and rented Laclède's headquarters as government offices, and Spanish soldiers provided local security. Early landowners in St. Louis were required to enclose their lots with wooden or stone fencing for security reasons, and lots contained sheds, barns, vegetable gardens and sometimes fruit trees. The residents depended on common land south of the town for firewood and pasture land, which extended from Third Street west nearly three miles, north to Mill Creek, and south for several miles until the 1790s when it was truncated for the new settlement of Carondelet, Missouri. In spite of this agriculture, fur trading was the major focus of many residents. Upon the arrival of Piernas to St. Louis in 1769, there was no church and no enforcement of laws relating to religious observances. The estate of former commandant St. Ange contributed funds toward the building of a new church in 1774, but it was delayed by the death of its carpenter until mid-1776. In May 1776, Valentine was replaced by another Capuchin, Father Bernard de Limpach, who became the first pastor of the St. Louis parish, and with this and the completion of the new church building, Catholic religious observance became a customary component of life in St. Louis. Among the earliest problems confronting the Spanish commanders of St. Louis was the issue of Indian slavery, which was abolished by a decree written by Spanish Governor O'Reilly and published by Piernas in May 1770. These Indian slaves generally were replaced by African slaves via manumission, although some remained in bondage until the 1830s when freedom suits led to final Indian emancipation. Upon the promotion of Piernas to a new post in New Orleans in 1775, control of St. Louis passed to Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Cruzat, who continued the lax enforcement of Spanish policies common under Piernas. The population of the village increased to nearly 700, and in 1775, St. Louis merchants exported several hundred quintals of flour to New Orleans. The same year, Pierre Laclède, founder of St. Louis, died while returning from a trade expedition to New Orleans. ==St. Louis in the American Revolution==

Since the beginning of hostilities between the British and their American subjects, Spanish governors in New Orleans assisted the American rebels with weapons and ammunition. Along with his appointment as the new commander of St. Louis, Fernando de Leyba was instructed to abet any rebel Americans in British territory and recruit Catholics living in British territory to move to St. Louis. By early 1779, the British commander Henry Hamilton had retaken the town of Vincennes, and his forces were advancing on Kaskaskia. Hamilton informed Leyba and Galvez that if American forces retreated to Spanish territory, he would pursue them there and attack Spanish forces, likely attacking St. Louis. However, Clark managed to defeat the British forces and capture Hamilton himself in February 1779, averting the threat to the town. Prior to their departure, however, an American trader had alerted Leyba in St. Louis as to the plan, giving time to develop defensive measures around the town. Only one of four planned masonry towers was built, near the current intersection of Fourth and Walnut streets, and the rest of the town was surrounded by more than a mile of entrenchments. In spite of their defeat, the British attack destroyed much of St. Louis' agricultural lands and cattle stock, killed 23 residents, wounded 7, and captured 25 as prisoners. The battle losses and his inability to pay merchants for supplies given to the Americans damaged Leyba's reputation in St. Louis, and Leyba died after a lengthy illness on June 28, 1780. Galvez quickly reappointed former commander Francisco Cruzat, who arrived in St. Louis with ammunition, weapons and supplies to defend the town. After 1781, the British permanently evacuated the lands east of the Mississippi, leaving the land to the Americans. A lack of effective American government there led many remaining Creole families to emigrate to St. Louis from 1780 to 1783, bringing about a 19% increase in the population to about 900, not including slaves. Among these families was that of Gabriel Cerre and Charles Gratiot, merchants from Kaskaskia and Cahokia. Upon his arrival in St. Louis, Cerre was counted as the wealthiest merchant in the town, owning more than 850 acres of land around St. Louis and 6,000 acres along the Meramec River. Cerre's daughters married into the elite of Creole society, including eldest daughter Marie Anne who married Pierre-Louis Panet of Montreal in 1781; second daughter Marie Therese who married Auguste Chouteau, co-founder of St. Louis in 1786, and the youngest daughter Julia married Antoine Soulard, a surveyor who added significant property additions at the periphery of St. Louis. Charles Gratiot, the second major merchant to relocate to St. Louis at the end of the American Revolution, also added to the wealth of the community. His English and trade skills allowed him to aid the Americans during the war, but in 1781, he relocated to the west bank, where he married Victoire Chouteau, daughter of Laclède and sister to Auguste Chouteau. During his lifetime, Gratiot and his wife raised nine children to maturity in status and wealth (especially his son Charles Gratiot, a significant engineer and soldier), forming the basis of another group of St. Louis elites. The two merchant families of Gratiot and Cerre intermarried with the Chouteau family to create a society in the 1780s and 1790s that was dominated by French Creoles with marital ties to Spanish government officials, including lieutenant governors Piernas and Cruzat. ==Transfer to France and the United States==

Throughout the 1790s, the area near St. Louis expanded as small farmers sold their lands to the Cerres, Gratiots, Soulards, or Chouteaus in St. Louis. These farmers moved to outlying towns founded after St. Louis, including Carondelet (originally called Delor's Village or Vide Poche), which was founded in 1767 by an ex-naval officer near the mouth of the River Des Peres. The village in 1796 had 181 residents, and it normally produced food surpluses for the area. Another of the area villages was St. Charles, which was founded on the north bank of the Missouri about 20 miles northwest of St. Louis. Some of these small farmers and artisans, upon hearing news of the successes of the French Revolution, began agititating in the late 1790s in support of French ideals. On September 22, 1796, a group of St. Louis artisans led a "noisy celebration" in support of a return of Louisiana to an egalitarian French government. The Spanish government secretly returned the unprofitable Louisiana territory to France in October 1800 in the Treaty of San Ildefonso. After a promise by French leader Napoleon Bonaparte not to sell Louisiana without giving Spain the right of first refusal, the Spanish officially transferred control of Louisiana to France in October 1802. On March 8, 1804, the flag of Spain was lowered at the government buildings in St. Louis and, according to local tradition, the flag of France was raised. On March 10, 1804, the French flag was replaced by the flag of the United States. ==Notes==